Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
past few years with the sale value of the industry touching Rs. 100 billion so far.
However , the country still lags behind regional and comparable economies in terms
of digitization of its payment sytems and efficiency of its logistics environment.
Pakistan is ranked at 120 among the different countries of the world, which is far
behind the regional countries including China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and etc.
The issues related to Ecommerce have been persistent despite increase in its
adoptability among the masses and the consistent penetration in the coverage areas.
The industry could move at much faster peace if these issues are fixed on long-term
basis by the industry players and other stakeholders.
State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in its report identified weak areas of the Ecommerce
industry of Pakistan. It highlighted how accelerated growth could be achieved while
addressing the issues related to the industry, which will also benefit the economy of
the country at a large scale.
Here are some of the issues that Pakistani ecommerce industry needs to focus on:
Lack of Options
The efficacy of the online payment system gets diminished as many banks do not by
default allow debit cards to be used for online transactions. Either the customers have
to contact bank’s helpline to activate the debit cards for e-commerce for a set
timeframe, or the debit cards simply cannot be used to transact online.
In this regard, commercial banks should allow their consumers the option to pre-select
at the time of issuance of debit cards the right of e-commerce application, alongside
providing them due security and a Transaction Monitoring Systems protocol, which is
already in place for credit cards.
Reducing search and contractual costs of vendors due to computerized systems and
common digital infrastructure may help increase efficiency of the system by allowing
swift transactions and providing co-sales services such as data analytics and payment
platforms.
Stock Management
On the stock management front, a section of Ecommerce companies and vendors sell
their products through logistic service are in the process of digitizing their inventory
systems and integrating their warehouse database with that of the website’s central
domain. This enables the sellers to operate on a Just in Time (JIT) rather than on a Just
in Case (JIC) basis, thereby reducing storage and processing costs and quickening the
purchasing process.
Future Outlook
With the entrance of Chinese digital giants such as Alibaba (through acquisition of
Daraz.pk) and Ant Financial (via a 45 percent stake investment in Telenor
Microfinance Bank), the e-commerce landscape of Pakistan can be expected to evolve
rapidly.
Following the success of their technological products and services in China, these
players are likely to introduce and inspire variants of the same in the digital landscape
of Pakistan. For example, the market spaces may give higher level of attention
towards personalization and customization of their content and product
recommendation protocols. The purchasers’ history of browsing through the
marketplace, and the record of their previous purchases would be used to improve
marketing and sales experience.
On the payments front, the market players would tap into the exponentially growing
usage of ecommerce platforms on mobile phones (the phenomenon often referred to
as m-commerce) and offer new modes of transaction settlements.
The next step would be to use the consumers’ purchasing history to devise a credit
scoring mechanism to offer micro-loans for transactions and, eventually, savings.